Artist: Phantogram
Album: Voices
Year: 2014
Grade: B+
In Brief: This electro-rock/dream pop/trip-hop duo massively stepped up on their second album, keeping the experimental edge they’d established on their debut while showing off some next-level beats and vocal hooks on what are still some of the catchiest and most eerily dark songs they’ve ever put out. It took me a while to realize it since I didn’t get into the band until later, but Voices is an overlooked candidate that probably should have been on my list when I considered the best albums of the 2010s.
“2014 was mid.”
I made this rather hasty and ill-conceived declaration just recently, when a friend brought up the topic of favorite albums from that year that were now hitting their tenth anniversary. It wasn’t long before I looked at my Music Journal for that year, reminded myself of all the albums I’d liked that came out that year and how I had ranked them, and realized I was being unfair. 2014 might not boast the same long list of indisputable 5-star offerings that the incredible run from 2011 to 2013 gave me, and it’s the first year of the 2010s for which I didn’t really uncover any long-lost classics that I’d completely missed out on during my Gap Year project in 2023. But I realize that’s not really a problem with a downturn in the quality of music released that year – it’s more of an affirmation that I got that year “right” the first time around. It was the first full year after my switch to streaming in late 2013, and thus it was easier to jump on new music recommendations right away, broadening the horizons of what I was willing to give a chance. The only true “misses” I regret from that year were from artists who simply weren’t on my radar then, that I’ve developed a great deal of respect for in the years since. Wye Oak traded guitar-heavy indie rock for bass-heavy experimental electropop on Shriek – but that was a gap I managed to fill in before last year’s project, having already reviewed it back in 2020. Suzanne Vega‘s Tales from the Realm of the Queen of Pentacles was a low-key but elegant and intriguing late-career renaissance from an artist whose entire discography I was unfamiliar with until just recently. But the true unsung hero of that year, which I’ve chosen for this month’s throwback review spotlight, is Phantogram‘s Voices.
Phantogram is an experimental electronic duo from New York made up of Sarah Barthel and Josh Carter, who both trade off lead vocals (though Sarah fills that role much more often than Josh) and are instrumental and production wizards as well. First impressions of their sound will often bring the genres tags “trip-hop” and “dream pop” to mind – they’re big on distorting and sampling bits and pieces of their recordings in ways that are often catchy but also sometimes jarringly weird, and the overall rhythm, mood, and tone of their music can change wildly from one track to the next, sometimes at the expense of a cohesive album listen. I’ve talked about them a few times before, after first discovering them via their 2016 album Three, and later reviewing their fourth and most recent album Ceremony, a March 2020 release that I’ve come to see in retrospect as the last “normal” album release I got to enjoy before the pandemic went into high gear and other concerns took precedent. Not long before Ceremony came out, I had gone back and tried to absorb their 2010 debut Eyelid Movies as well as Voices – the former still eludes me in terms of its appeal outside of a handful of interesting songs, but the latter proved to have enough heavy-hitters to go toe-to-toe with Three when I considered which album was their best. Both releases are quite top-heavy – I’d consider the three opening tracks on each album to be nothing less than absolute bangers, and things tend to get weirder and more avant-garde from there on in, though both have their fair share of late-album highlights as well. Ultimately I have to give Voices the edge because it sticks the landing at the very end, whereas I still can’t stomach Three‘s weak and embarrassing closer, “Calling All”. Phantogram has tried on a lot of different musical personalities over the years, and at times they can generate so much heat with their clever crafting of rhythm’s and Sarah’s sultry delivery that they can’t help but come across as effortlessly sexy. When they try to be deliberately sexy, in my opinion at least, it doesn’t work as well. Voices, for a good part of its run, comes out on the right side of this equation, dangling the mysterious allure right out in front of the listener but then snatching it away just when we think it might be within reach – you can want it, but you can’t have it. And I find that way more intriguing than just bluntly letting all the sex appeal hang out right there in the open, personally.
It should be no surprise that in addition to being trippy and sometimes quite sexy, Phantogram’s music also leans rather dark, thematically speaking. There’s a lot of emotional turbulence in their songwriting, and even when they hit euphoric highs, it’s sometimes hinted at that this state of being was assisted by certain substances, and there’s probably a terrifying crash lurking just around the corner. The mix of highs and lows proves to be an effective roller coaster throughout Voices, actually coming across as relatable even though it’s fair to say my life experiences have been quite different than the ones they seem to be writing about here. Sometimes all it takes is the hand of a loyal friend on the shoulder, a few laughs from a favorite comedian, or the thrill of new attraction coupled with the danger of actually falling in love and all of the messy strings attached that come with it, to jolt their songwriting out of its depressive pattern and make it clear that they recognize there’s genuine beauty to be explored and appreciated, even in our most despairing moments. Still, you get the impression from the majority of the material on Voices that these two have been through some harrowing experiences, and I think it’s a gift to take difficult subject matter and make it so twistedly pleasing to the human ear that we can’t help but move with the rhythm, vibrate to the almost unnervingly deep bass grooves, sing along to the words, and wonder how the heck these songs came into being. That’s the seductive magic of Voices, one of those rare albums that might not have clicked with me at first, but that seems to get better and better every time I go back to it.
INDIVIDUAL TRACKS:
1. Nothing But Trouble
Phantogram’s knack for coming up with engrossing, hard-hitting sound collages is immediately apparent on this bottom-heavy opener, full of outsized synth bass and scratchy electric guitar riffs. There’s a delightfully demented guitar solo in the middle of this one that has to be heard to be believed, and it’s bizarre how effectively Sarah’s voice floats above it all, like clear droplets of water that somehow remain pure despite the oily muck they’re tumbling around in. Right away she’s pondering some sort of an existential crisis: “Do you ever have the feeling that you’ve constantly been dreaming this is life?” But the lyrics suggest that she’s not trying to make a clear case for reality being fantasy, so much as she’s just trying to push buttons and get a response – check out the menacing line “They’re eating all my shotgun smiles” in the pre-chorus and tell me if that makes any sense. Then she coyly plays it off in the refrain: “Don’t listen to me/I’m nothing but trouble/I’m losing my mind.” It doesn’t come off like the ramblings of a crazy person – more like it’s a person who fears losing her grip on sanity, so she’s bringing up these outlandish scenarios in search of validation, wanting someone to talk her down and tell her it’ll all be OK. But all the turbulence and distortion rumbling about beneath her, right up to the song’s abrupt end, makes it pretty clear that she won’t be coming down off that ledge any time soon.
Grade: A
2. Black Out Days
This track (and various remixes of it) utterly dominates Phantogram’s list of most streamed songs. It’s not even a close contest! And I’d say it’s deserving of that honor, thanks to its utterly hypnotic vocal hook: “Stay! Ay-ay-ay-ay-ya! Aw-ay-ay-ay-ya!” Just try to resist getting that one stuck in your head – it’s a fool’s errand. Samples of Sarah’s voice stutter up and down all throughout this one, reverberating off of another killer synthetic groove that once again cranks up the bass. It exudes the sort of detached coolness that you’d expect from a really good trip-hop track, but its lyrics suggest anything but a calm and cool demeanor, finding Sarah so haunted by voices in her head telling her who she should be and what she should do that she doesn’t even recognize herself or the people she loves any more. Whether this mental blackout was triggered by alcohol or some sort of drug, or it’s just a severe panic attack of some sort, is left up to interpretation, but clearly it’s a terrifying experience, and the song almost feels like a sort of incantation trying to ward it off. Everything about this performance is top-notch and utterly gripping – it’s not just that it has a huge hook (though that obviously helps a lot!), it’s also how effectively the programmed elements act as reflective surfaces for the array of sounds you’re hearing to bounce off of each other, giving you a glimpse into what seems to be a bottomless well lined with funhouse mirrors. It’s fascinating and terrifying all at once.
Grade: A+
3. Fall in Love
My personal favorite Phantogram song of their entire discography no far is also no slouch in the streaming department – it may come in a distant second to “Black Out Days”, but we’re talking tens of millions of streams compared to hundreds here. It was the album’s first single and clearly it got its fair share of attention. Ironically, it almost didn’t wind up being a Phantogram song at all, beginning life as an instrumental rhythmic bit that Josh was going to shop around for use on a hip-hop record, before Sarah “stole” it, added some utterly mean synth bass, and came up with an alluring vocal melody. I fell for this one hard on first listen, largely because of the rich, minor-key chord sequence that it boasts, where you have these moody chord changes all jutting out against each other and yet somehow they all work thanks to the stomping hip-hop swagger that the song exudes from front to back. Some melancholy strings get sampled here (Genius tells me they’re from Barbara Mason‘s 1965 hit “Yes, I’m ready”, though for some reason I’m reminded of the opening theme from The Americans, which I was just getting into around the time this album dropped), and some of the looped backing vocals might also be sampled from that same source, or else they’re just Sarah’s vocals multi-tracked and given a ghostly distortion effect – it’s truly hard to tell. She paints a picture of having a guy fall in love with her while she’s utterly emotionless and indifferent to his advances – it’s not that she doesn’t care for the guy, because she states in the chorus that she’s sorry she can’t return his affections and give him any certainty beyond a weak “maybe”, but given the screwed-up mental state that she’s in, she ends up feeling like she’s just dragging him into an unstoppable car wreck. I don’t know what it says about me that I’m so enthralled by the fatalistic sense of romanticism expressed in this song – the damsel in distress seems to believe she’s not worth saving, at least not by this particular knight in shining armor, and he’s blowing right past all the red flags at his own expense, so by all accounts, this is the farthest thing possible from a wholesome love story. But it feels real. I’ve watched people do this, thinking a relationship could be the thing to rescue them from a deep depression, only to drag the other person into their web of dysfunction. That Sarah, as the narrator of this song, can at least recognize the harm she might do to this person she genuinely cares for and make a vain attempt to scare him off before it gets too late, suggests that maybe she’s not as far gone as she thinks she is.
Grade: A+
4. Never Going Home
Josh takes over on lead vocals for a song that sounds like it’s going to be more simplistic and laid-back at first, with its uncluttered, mid-tempo beat and its clean guitar melody. His voice has a sort of strained earnestness to it, not unlike the more sinister side of Peter Gabriel. But the character he voices in this song seems to have no ulterior motive – he’s just pleading with someone he loves not to go and die on him because it’s the only genuine love he’s ever experienced (with some hints in the second verse that mom and dad didn’t give him much of it). There’s not a whole lot of detail in the lyrics department, to be honest, but you can feel his anxiety ramping up in the chorus when the guitars get much more thick and distorted, and he keeps declaring, “If this is love, I’m never going home.” Basically he’s rejecting what he was taught was love as a kid because it was a terrible example, and sticking to this fleeting example of it even though the person he’s fallen in love with might not be his for very long – if you believe his feelings here are genuine, and especially if you read this as a perspective flip on the situation described in “Fall in Love”, then it just makes the song that much sadder.
Grade: B
5. The Day You Died
While the last few songs have definitely flirted with death and disaster as a possible outcome of a dysfunctional relationship, this song that actually mentions death in its title seems to use the term metaphorically. It’s the most standard pop/rock-leaning of anything the duo’s had to offer so far on this album, which isn’t a bad thing – it reminds me of some of the more reflective side of Garbage, with the drum programming still present but more of a background element behind the live instrumentation, most notably the melodic electric guitar part that glides smoothly throughout, and the thrilling live drum fills that augment the programmed rhythm as the bridge turns a corner into the final chorus. It’s not as “hooky” as the opening three tracks, but it’s still well done, and it’s easily the most directly heartfelt moment on the album thus far. Sarah is thinking of breaking off a relationship because it’s clear to her that she doesn’t feel anything for the other person – but her fear is that he won’t feel anything either and they’ll both walk away unaffected, as if the whole experience meant nothing. She’s lamenting the day this person “died” in the sense that he appears to be emotionally dead – and maybe they both are. Finding someone who can relate when you’re going through a mental health crisis can certainly help you to feel less alone – but getting involves in a high-stakes emotional relationship when you’re both trying to work through your own baggage is a bad idea because it comes with the expectation that you’ll somehow be able to rescue each other from those murky depths. Walking away from it all while feeling emotionally dead is certainly a blow to the ego, but at least they’re both still alive to have those regrets.
Grade: B+
6. Howling at the Moon
Sarah imagines herself as a proverbial wolf in this song of lament over a lost friend, in which she spends her sleepless nights howling at the moon as a way of expressing her grief. By this point you should know that Phantogram songs can be incredibly sad and still irresistibly funky at the same time, and this one does a pretty good job of striking that uneasy balance, thanks to the dramatic sampled string/keyboard hits and the clattering percussion track that gives it a bit of a metallic edge. It’s a very busy, full-sounding production that still lets Sarah’s angst come through loud and clear. We may not be clear on who she lost and whether it was a literal or metaphorical death, but if the ordering of these songs on the album is meant to give us any clues, we could reasonably assume she’s singing about the same person who inadvisably fell in love with her on track three, whom she broke up with on track five. If so, then either the damage done drove him to self-harm, or she just regrets the emotionally dead state she left him in. It eats at her so much that she’s willing to give up a part of herself to save him: “Yeah, I will crucify my dreams to be on your side/To see you alive.”
Grade: B
7. Bad Dreams
There’s some beautifully intricate drum programming in this track – I love how the quick, tumbling rhythm rolls along, suggesting a faster and more hectic arrangement even though it’s otherwise a mid-tempo pop/rock tune. The guitar work is actually quite good here as well, with a “gliding” lead part that isn’t particularly flashy, but that adds to the mysterious texture of the song, backed up by a solid rhythm part. these two are so versatile in the studio that they come across sounding like a full band – one with a lot of electronic augmentation, of course, but one that sounds a heck of a lot more vital than your average band that throws a drum loop behind a bit of guitar noodling and calls it a day. Much like in “Nothing But Trouble”, I’m back to wondering if Sarah is playing the role of the reliable narrator as she insists “Bad dreams never affect me”, while making it clear that she’s having some sort of world-ending premonitions. Clearly something messed up has to be going on in the human mind for it to come up with those sorts of horror scenarios on the regular – but her character being in denial about this is what once again gives the song its too-cool-to-care edge. “I’m not doing this all in fun”, she insists, while disassociating herself from the trauma in a way that makes her feel like nothing more than an actor on a movie set. Basically it sounds like she’s come up with a coping mechanism to help her deal with the visions thrown at her from the darkest recesses of her mind.
Grade: B+
8. Bill Murray
I had overlooked this slow, dirgelike track for quite a while, convinced at first that this wasn’t really the sort of thing I listened to Phantogram for. It didn’t have much in the way of a hook, or any rhythmic syncopation, it just sort of slowly glided along in its sustained sadness. A nudge from my brother, who apparently loves the song so much he made his own fan video for it, convinced me to give it a close listen, and… wow. I had really missed the boat on this one; it’s gorgeous and it has a lot going on. The breathy samples of Sarah’s voice push it into “dream pop” territory even though you’ve still got this deep, menacing synth bass washing across it at several points. I think there’s also some glockenspiel and slide guitar in here, which is highly unusual for an electronic band, but it adds to the eerie yet ethereal mood that the song is trying to set for us. Calling it “Bill Murray” was certainly an unusual move since the actor isn’t named anywhere in the lyrics – the closest thing we have to a chorus is the slowly repeated phrase “Burning star”, which the unsuspecting listener would probably assume was the title instead. But the non-appearing title was deliberate, since the whole aura of the song reminded the duo of Bill Murray, an actor once known for his comedic talents who sort of made a career renaissance out of taking on sad, tragicomic sorts of roles (think Lost in Translation and numerous films he’s worked on from that point forward and you’ll get the idea). At one point they were so bold as to suggest he could star in the music video (which doesn’t appear to have ever gotten made, since all I can find on YouTube is “official audio” and various live performances). Like much of the album, it’s a reflection on loss, the sadness and detached feelings that result from it, and our struggles to hang on to whatever is meaningful – it’s just a much slower and calmer take on that whole vibe. No idea whether Murray was ever aware of this song or how he reacted to it – but I like to think he’d take it as a compliment regarding his range as an actor.
Grade: A-
9. I Don’t Blame You
The other track where Josh takes over lead vocals is a bizarro deep cut for sure – we’re pretty far off at this point from the more conventionally catchy stuff that the record opened with, and yet I find this to be one of the most addictive tracks on Voices, largely due to its complex rhythm track. It’s the only track on the album to not be in 4/4 – I guess you could consider it 6/8, though the hissy, cymbal-heavy drum sample renders it more like 12/16. Even though Josh’s vocals render it in more of a slow and moody fashion, I still think it would translate to a fascinating rush of energy in a live setting. Josh’s voice has a bit of a muffled effect on it, almost as if he’s singing through some sort of hazy distortion, trying to reach someone on the other side who he’s sorry for failing to communicate with in the past. The lyrics suggest that this person reached out to him and he blew them off, and not for any particular reason – he was off somewhere having a happy day for a change, oblivious to their cry for help until it was too late. We don’t know exactly what it is that he’s trying to absolve them of blame for, but given the emotional distress expressed throughout most of this album, we’re led to expect the worst.
Grade: A-
10. Celebrating Nothing
The penultimate track returns us to more of an up-tempo 4/4, with a bit of a bounce to the drums and bass – but you should know by now not to confuse up-tempo with upbeat. Boy, this might just be the most depressing track on the entire album, almost embodying the experience of young adult ennui as it expresses sheer indifference toward life due to the lack of anything worth celebrating. Perhaps it’s a cliche that we throw around to make ourselves feel like we’re doing something to help, but often when people express troubling thoughts about possibly ending their own lives, we try to persuade them to find something good and beautiful in life, something to “live for”, and this song basically rebuffs that pithy answer and says, “I’ve got nothing left”. The actual chorus of the song is: “Give me a reason to stay alive/I’ve got the feeling we’re gonna die.” Sarah delivers these words in such a fashion that it’s easy to feel sympathetic and genuinely sad for her, having fallen so far that she’s reached this point of giving up on her life having any meaning. If there’s a silver lining here – and trust me, I’m looking pretty hard for one – it’s that she seems so bereft of any real agency that it doesn’t seem like she’s going to take matters into her own hands in terms of making that “we’re gonna die” prophecy come true. She’s just waiting around for it to happen.
Grade: B-
11. My Only Friend
The closing track is another one that I had overlooked for quite a while – for some reason I remembered it being just a quiet piano ballad, which it is at the outset, but I had completely forgotten that it takes a thrilling turn midway through. Phantogram is better at the slow stuff than I had initially given them credit for, is the lesson I’m learning here – which makes me wonder if there isn’t more material on Eyelid Movies that might recapture my attention if I were to go back and give that one another shot. Depending on your interpretation, you might see this ending as the final push from the precipice of despair into the bottomless pit of doom, or you might see it as the first step toward recovery. A basic reading of the lyrics tells us that Sarah’s on the verge of losing a friend, this time pretty clearly to physical death since she lamented that “You’ve lost your battle” despite her best attempts to hold them close and comfort them in their darkest hour. Maybe it’s some sort of terminal disease, maybe they just gave up on living… who knows? I think if this song had remained a sparse piano ballad throughout, I would have read the ending as nothing but bleakness for its own sake – great, she finally found something to live for and now she’s lost that too. But the sonic upturn that this song takes, bringing back the synth bass and the drum programming and the “full band” sound for one last push toward the finish line, makes it feel like a release of emotions that had been held back this entire time. Yes, she’s feeling something incredibly sad due to this unspeakable loss, but it also communicates volumes about how much she loved that person, and if we’ve learned anything from the detached malaise described in so many of this album’s songs, it’s that feeling something beats feeling nothing. Maybe it’s naive of me, and maybe I’m just trying to find some sort of redeeming factor to keep this ending from being an utterly nihilistic one, but to me, this seems like it’s describing day one of a long recovery. While I’m also partial to the title track from Ceremony, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that this is Phantogram’s best album closer thus far.
Grade: B+
WHAT’S IT WORTH TO ME?
Nothing But Trouble $1.75
Black Out Days $2
Fall in Love $2
Never Going Home $1
The Day You Died $1.25
Howling at the Moon $1
Bad Dreams $1.25
Bill Murray $1.50
I Don’t Blame You $1.50
Celebrating Nothing $.75
My Only Friend $1.25
TOTAL: $15.25
BAND MEMBERS:
Sarah Barthel: Lead vocals, keyboards, piano, synths, guitars, programming
Josh Carter: Vocals, guitars, synths, drums, percussion, programming
LISTEN FOR YOURSELF:
MORE USEFUL LINKS:
http://www.phantogram.com
https://www.facebook.com/Phantogram/
murlough23 
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